Father Thomas Keating

#1

"Silence 

is God's first language

everything else

is a poor translation.

Whatever we say about God

is more unlike God

than saying nothing."

Father Thomas Keating

#2 - I have a friend coming to stay with me this weekend and I am really looking forward to it, in fact I would say I need it.  She also is a friend that I sometimes write with over the phone and she has suggested we write together - also a perfect recipe.

#3 - I was planning to go speed dating tonight. However both speed dating events I signed up for this month were postponed, this one to my monthly poetry group night so I will not be going. When the first one happened my plans were redirected to another event that made sense. Tonight the only redirection I know of thus far is potentially cleaning my bathroom and making a grocery list, but I guess it is an "easier" evening.

#4 - My friend gave me a guitar this week. Yes that sentence is repeatable.  My friend bought/gave me a guitar.  I started playing guitar in 2010 and have had various guitars on loan during that time (or for a couple years not having one at all). And then Monday one appeared in my hands. 

 It sounds really good and I want to write a song, which I was doing until 2017, but then that dried up.  I still write poems, but songs have been elusive.  I don't know how anymore, but I'm trying, or attempting to try.  I am willing.

#5 - If you want to be free, if you want to heal your relationship with God, with others and yourself, enter your inner room—the office, where the Divine Therapy takes place.

Close the door so you don’t run away.

Quiet your interior dialogue so that you can listen to what the Spirit is saying to you."

Father Thomas Keating

More Merton

 #1- I hung out with friend Monday, talked to 2 friends on the phone yesterday and jogged with another friend today.  I'm having a good friend week.  (This is after the end of my last weekend when I thought - even as an introvert I've had enough time alone!!)

#2 - I have a new family that I had the 2nd home visit today.  The mom is bilingual but the primary language of the home is Spanish so we've mostly been doing the visits in Spanish.  The accent is easy for me to understand (Mexican) and there is no pressure, because we can switch to English when I don't know something (though I hope we mostly continue to work with the child in Spanish!)

#3 - An older child was home today as there was no school and I have never seen a more supportive older sibling (the child in the program is a special needs child).

#4 - I'm going speed dating on Saturday and after asking multiple single people to accompany I finally found someone else to join.  (I didn't actually ask her, I just told her about it and she asked me to send the info and then decided to sign up.)

#5 - "The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of contemporary violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence.  The frenzy of our activity, neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom, which makes work fruitful." - Thomas Merton